An history of CRPGs (LONG)

[Eric J.]

Speculation: Is it possible that the rise of Narritivism has to do with the competition between CRPGs and P&P RPGs.  Out of just my opinion, if I want to do tactical combat, it doesn't hurt to have the rules carried out instantaniously with nice spell effects.  What if P&P RPGs are simply adapting to suit a different environment?

[contracycle]

To clarify my point about the puzzles defeating the purpose:

If the basic act is Exploration, then being bogged down in a puzzle prevents exploration.  To me this is analogous to character death, in that the player has effectively stopped playing.  At best, play progress is temporarily suspended while the player solves the problem of how to continue playing.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Play is also often bogged down with random combats all the time. The final Fantasy Series is horrible with this, and other game even more. Take one step, fight an monster. Take another step, fight a monster. Take a third step, fight a monster. Bleh!

[Hunter Logan]

M.J. and Travis,

Thank you both for your responses. It sounds like some of the current MUDs are a lot closer to actual roleplaying than single player crpgs. It also sounds like the presence of human staff goes a long way to providing narrative input, or at least some director control for the players.

[Tavish]

Greetings all, I'm fairly new with alot of the terminology being thrown around but I thought I might drop a few insights from the crpg side of the fence.  I have been designing online rpg's for almost a decade now with several semi-successful designs(if success were to be judged in the number of players who joined the game) and a contributing member to the devolpment community for muds.  Most of my background is in the text based gaming but like almost all of the players of crpgs my formal introduction to roleplay came from tabletop.
  I'll briefly touch a few of the topics hit on and if there is any further intrest I would be more than happy to expand, and just as likely to ask questions myself.
  An excellent gaming timeline can be found   HERE.

Eric J
Is it possible that the rise of Narritivism has to do with the competition between CRPGs and P&P RPGs. Out of just my opinion, if I want to do tactical combat, it doesn't hurt to have the rules carried out instantaniously with nice spell effects. What if P&P RPGs are simply adapting to suit a different environment?

I don't believe it is due to the competition.  Moreso a progression of designers trying to expand away from things that have been done so many times before.  In much the same way the trend in mud design is moving away from the hack and slash designs of old towards more social interaction and community building.

Hunter
 It sounds like some of the current MUDs are a lot closer to actual roleplaying than single player crpgs.

That is where many of the comparison that have been made in this and some of the other similar threads will fail.  While tabletop, muds, and Zork-style( usually labeled interactive fiction) games are all part of the gaming community, comparisons between the single player games and tabletop is apples and oranges.  It would be much the same as comparing a tabletop campaign to a "choose-your-own-adventure" book.  IFiction  games are almost always designed as games you can win, games with an ending.  Open ended gaming such as muds and tabletop also must deal with multiple players and social interaction and are very easily comparable in the terms of design and play.  They rely upon similar mechanics and similar themes.  Many muds are simply tabletop manuals converted to computer code, using the same formulas, same systems.

A very interesting article by Richard Bartle ( a co-creator of the original MUD) might be of interest being that instead of focusing on game mechanics he focuses on player mechanics.  Alright, enough for now, I will try and add more thoughts later.

[edited to fix a url.  *grumbles about the learning curve of new forums*]